truesee's Blog

Drunk man caught driving with just three tires, two-year-old son riding in backseat: cops

John Doyle
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, October 21st 2011, 11:09 PM

Elizabeth Tato, 46, was arrested on a charge of neglect of a child without great harm. (Orange County Jail / October 21, 2011)

6:14 p.m. EDT, October 21, 2011

In an interview last week with The Inquirer, Mitsch said the message was taken out of context. He said the comment about “moaning” simply meant that people should not damage their relationship by fighting.

“I definitely did not mean that sexually; I meant don’t take the time to argue. … It’s much easier in life to just agree to disagree rather than to argue,” he said last Thursday.

He then said the message might have been sent by one of his associates at his office, who sometimes manage his Twitter account when he is traveling on business.

“Is it possible that I did? Yes, but I don’t recall,” he said.

At the Wednesday editorial board meeting, Mitsch said he could not find the direct messages on his account. He said he thinks the screen shot is a fake and an attempt to smear him.

“I did not post the tweets in question,” he said. “They took phrases from tweets and rearranged them in order to make it appear — I feel deliberately and maliciously — that I was anti-female, and I have never acknowledged those tweets.”

The follower who claims to have had the exchange with Mitsch is a 37-year-old man who did not know Mitsch but followed him because Mitsch offers financial and real estate advice. He now works for a Democratic politician in another state and said he did not want his name used for fear of losing his job.

He denies that he fabricated the exchange or baited Mitsch into making the statements, but he said the platform he used for Twitter did not save his sent direct messages, so he could provide no proof of his own comments to Mitsch.

Mitsch described his 67,000-plus tweets as riffs on finances, politics, life lessons, and relationship advice. He said he considers himself something of a Dear Abby and a motivational speaker.

Some of his tweets link to the blog on his website, philmitschforamerica.com, where he gives his explanations for the country’s economic woes.

Some tweets read like motivational posters.

“Leadership Tip — great leaders do not control their followers. They lead them in the right direction,” he wrote Monday.

Others are hard to characterize.

“Drinking draino and smoking dutch cleanser will only get a very few people through life,” Mitsch wrote Sept. 1.

On Wednesday, Mitsch said he wanted voters to focus on his ideas for helping the economy, not his tweets, which he describes as sometimes infused with his “dry sense of humor.”

Mitsch said New Jersey’s 2 percent property-tax cap, which Gov. Christie signed into law last year, is “a total failure.” He advocates an immediate cut to property taxes of 30 percent to 40 percent. Cuts to the state budget could pay for the plan, he said.

“Gov. Christie, of course I understand he doesn’t have my business background and understand the economy the way I do, so I don’t mean it as a personal attack on him, but he seems to be content just taking his foot and putting it lightly on the brake,” Mitsch said. “But the car’s still going to hit the wall and kill all the passengers in the car. What Phil Mitsch wants to do is, I want to take the pedal, push it through the floor onto the pavement, and stop.”

Beach, who supported the property-tax-relief program, said Mitsch’s plan was unreasonable.

“Obviously, he doesn’t understand how the Legislature works,” said Beach, 64, a senator since 2009. “You would have to get 21 senators to agree, you would have to get 41 Assembly people to agree, and the governor to agree. Or they’re just words.”

Mom admits she gave kids beer, cocaine

Daniel Tepfer

Staff Writer

Updated 09:05 a.m., Thursday, October 20, 2011

BRIDGEPORT -- A city woman pleaded guilty Wednesday to allegations that she forced her 4-year-old son to chug a bottle of beer and then gave her 10-month-old daughter beer and cocaine.

Juliette Dunn, 29, of Success Village, pleaded guilty under the so-called Alford Doctrine to two counts of risk of injury to a child. A female companion, 33-year-old Lisa Jefferson, pleaded guilty to the same charges.

Superior Court Judge Frank Ianotti told both women they could each face up to two years in prison when he sentences them Dec. 9, but that their lawyers could seek lesser terms.

According to police, on June 28 officers were patrolling Success Village when they were waved down by a neighbor who complained that a mother was feeding her children beer on the playground.

Police said they spotted Dunn and Jefferson sitting in folding chairs at the playground, the young children on the ground next to them. As officers approached them, police said they spotted an empty 40-ounce bottle of Steel reserve beer on the ground beside the boy. They said a baby bottle next to the baby contained a dark liquid that smelled strongly of an alcohol beverage. Dunn was identified as the childrens' mother.

Police said witnesses told them that Jefferson had handed the bottle of beer to the boy and ordered him to chug it. When he had finished it police said Jefferson called the boy an alcoholic.

Both children were taken to Bridgeport Hospital where police said both the boy and girl tested positive for alcohol and the 10-month-old also had cocaine in her system. While being examined police said the 4-year-old told a social worker he likes, "Natural Ice beer, Budweiser beer, but didn't like the taste of Dog-Bite beer."

Police continued that Dunn told them Jefferson gives her son a bottle of beer every day but she didn't know how her 10-month-old daughter tested positive for cocaine since she doesn't breast feed her.

The children were turned over temporarily to the Department of Children and Families after Dunn's arrest, but their long-term custody has not been decided.